Info about Rebates
Show Me the Money! Credit Card Rebates
There’s gold in thar hills, and I’m going to show you how to mine it. This is no gimmick. Not only you can use credit cards to conveniently buy things, but you can easily make money from them, get free airline tickets, cut the cost of gasoline, and more!
• America’s Love Affair with Card Rebates
Ahhh, love! Romantic escapes, red roses, chocolate, and…credit cards. What? Granted, we don’t typically associate those little pieces of plastic with romance, but our love affair with reward and rebate cards seems to grow stronger every year. About 85% of U.S. households had at least one reward card in 2007, and 80% of cardholders received some type of reward from their cards.
Let’s take a look at reward card basics. Then I share specific tips on how to get the most bang for your buck with each kind of reward. Believe it or not, you can receive hundreds of dollars in cash, gift cards, or airline tickets every year just for using a reward card for your everyday purchases. My wife and I typically get $700 to $1,000 back annually simply by being smart about how we use our cards.
If you’re not currently getting your slice of this tasty pie, I have a treat in store for you. A reward card is one of the best freebies available to consumers. When you discover the joys of taking advantage of one, I assure you that you will never use a card that gives you nothing back again.
Why do business with a company that doesn’t make it as lucrative for you as its competitors do?
If you’re already getting a piece of the pie, then let’s aim to get you an ever-bigger slice going forward. Cash-back reward cards, airline reward cards, gas rebate cards, and
any other reward cards they dream up can all boost your bottom line with remarkably little effort on your part.
• When Did the Reward Card Craze Begin?
Discover, which deserves much credit for transforming the card industry, introduced the first cash-back, no-fee card in a catchy commercial during the 1986 Super Bowl. The card offered a cash rebate of up to 1% on every purchase made using it. At a time when many cards had annual fees and when cash rewards were unheard of, Discover’s new card certainly stood out in a big way. No one had ever offered a no-fee card that gave cash back to boot.
Airline reward cards, which typically offer frequent flyer miles for every purchase you make on the card, began to grow in popularity as well back then. When the popular
Citi Advantage card debuted in 1987, this co-branded card (meaning it was affiliated with both American Airlines and Citibank) was among the first to offer miles that could be redeemed for free airline tickets.